A trip of a lifetime

We are up at 5am to get ready and get to the airport. We end up arriving about an hour earlier than we needed to, so could have got a bit more sleep which would have been nice. We leave at 9am and actually arrive about 10am as we go back 2 hours. We stop of again at Qingdao and transfer to Beijing. We arrive and get the train from the airport into the centre of Beijing and after a short walk manage to find the hostel, we will be staying in for at least the next week. This will probably be the first time since Goa that we have stayed anywhere for more than a few days. We get to the hotel and end up just chilling out as we are so knackered from not getting much sleep the last few nights. I feel a bit disappointed at leaving Japan, it’s a great place, but for us is just too expensive to spend any sort of time without working. It will definitely be a place that I would want to go and spend more time and maybe work. The Japanese really are a completely different type of people than and have a completely different way of life than any other people. I think I could spend my whole life between China and Japan!

Our week in Japan is over and it is the first time I have not wanted to leave a country. I think mainly because we were there such a short period and hardly saw anything. In hindsight we should have spent the week in just one or possibly two cities, but instead we were constantly rushing around. The Japanese really are unlike any other people we have met so far or I think we will meet again. It is a totally different culture! There very hard working, very respectful of others and their country, I thought China was clean, but Japan is just ridiculous (A girl in a hostel spent over an hour scrubbing a fridge door with a toothbrush). They take so much care in their appearance as well, they must be some of the most well dressed people in the world, I didn’t see a single person walking around looking scruffy. The bullet trains are amazing and they were to the minute on every train we got. They have so many weird things, vending machines are everywhere, they have loads of their multi storey car parks that stack the cars on top of each other. They are also so helpful and inquisitive when they see you, they really do seem like there from a totally different world. A better world! I am getting to the stage where I am thinking why on earth does everyone want to go and live in the UK, maybe it’s just a case of grass is greener on the other side. But I really can’t find any reason why living in the UK would be more appealing. They is also so much money going around, the amount of expensive cars we saw was ridiculous, everybody had an iPhone and we saw several Ipads. This is definitely a place I will have to revisit and ideally it would be great to work here for several years, but it is almost impossible to get work without a degree, or being married to a Japanese person.

Highlight – I can’t really choose a specific thing or place we went, just the whole experience was great.

Lowlight – Spending way too much money on nights out in Kyoto and Tokyo.

Comment Of Japan – Seb in Tokyo – You(Tom) look like a crack head and you(me) look sane.